The MacDeskBlog

Wow. I can’t believe how long it has been since I posted about the house. The taping and texturing is going much more slowly than Steve and I expected. It’s looking good though.

Steve and I hung the garage door. The process made me appreciate the price that the garage door company would have charged had they done the work for the agreed upon revised price.

Michelle and I decided to rent the house next door until we can move in. The new owner hasn’t been able to rent it yet, so he’s willing to rent it to us month-to-month. It’s working out well for both parties which is fantastic. And it has plenty of storage space. Living next door, I’ve been able to work a few weekday nights and mornings on the house, which is an improvement over living in San Francisco.

PG&E was supposed to hookup the power yesterday, but didn’t. I was told that when they reschedule, it’s usually for the following day or the day after. No power again today, so hopefully tomorrow (or some time this week anyway). We shall see.

I’ve been sitting on this news for over two months now. Wow. I knew this took a long time, but I didn’t realize just how long until this moment. I had a mediation session with my former contractor in early July. By the end of the day, it was pretty clear that his insurance carrier would settle my case against him. Then it just became a question of when they would realize how much money it would take. That took another couple of weeks, at which point we reached a settlement. Alas, their incompetence continued, which was aggravating but not surprising. They wanted me to sign the settlement agreement which stipulated that I had received the money from them before they were willing to write the check. After a lot of back and forth, we finally cleared that up and they got their signed settlement agreement minus the stipulation that they had already paid me. It took them another three weeks after that to finally send a check by courier, after the first one “got lost in the mail” (yeah right). [Of course, as with any settlement agreement, nobody admitted any fault of any sort.]

I am extremely happy today as I deposited the check. My attorney was extremely happy yesterday, as he got paid for the past two months of work. And my creditors will be extremely happy within the next week, as I am able to catch up on bills which have run up in anticipation of the check.

It’s a good day. I think I’ll go celebrate by heading to the Giants game to watch Barry Bonds hit #704 tonight against the Dodgers.

One of the contacts that I made through my incompetent former contractor was with a custom garage door manufacturer. The company had a nice selection of door styles and options and built each door to fit. They also offered a heavy discount for cash transactions, and I’m talking heavy. They built and installed my garage door back in 2003, and I was pleased.

So, when it came time to uninstall the garage door prior to jackhammering out the bad foundation in March of this year, I called them. They uninstalled the door and the opener for $100 and told me it would cost $400 to reinstall everything when I was ready. $400 seemed rather steep to me, but last week, when I was ready to have the door reinstalled, I called them up and scheduled it for Monday of this week. I was again quoted $400 for the installation.

Monday arrived, and the installer called me at 7AM. Maybe he thought he was calling a contractor, who would probably be up and about at 7AM, so I cut him some slack. Then he calls me back at 9AM to inform me that installing the garage door opener will cost extra (!) as well as “re-scribing” the door. He wants an extra $250 on top of the $400 I was quoted twice. So I hung up on him and called the office. I talked the office down from $650 to $600 and grudgingly rescheduled the installation for Tuesday morning. The installer had left instructions with my carpenter on some small framing changes which needed to be made before the installation.

When the phone rang Tuesday morning at 7AM, I didn’t answer it and the company didn’t leave a message. My carpenter had finished the framing when the installer arrived again. This time the installer said that part of the foundation needs to be chipped out in order for him to install the door and complained that the work had not already been completed though he had not said anything about it on Monday. Further, he said something about them not being interested in coming back again to do the work after Tuesday. We had to chip out the foundation then and there or he wouldn’t do the work!

When my carpenter called me to inform me of this, I told him to rudely toss the guy off my property.

Unfortunately, this means that I need to learn how to properly install a garage door, and probably need to tap some of the screws/bolts into the concrete. But I’m willing to take that responsibility on in order to avoid doing business with a company which tries to rape its customers like this.

A business really should honor its commitments such as the price it quotes for work. Further, if they require particular preparation be completed prior to their own work, they need to ensure that they make all of those requirements explicitly known. It should be entirely obvious that businesses should always (and I mean ALWAYS) treat their customers with the utmost respect.

The company who did this to me is City Overhead Doors on Mission St in San Francisco. I strongly discourage anyone from doing business with them.

I went to the house after work on Wednesday and installed the rest of the insulation, finishing just before midnight. Sheet rock was supposed to be delivered this morning at 8AM but the lumber yard totally screwed me today. The sheet rockers, of course, arrived pretty much on time, and spent a few hours twiddling their thumbs before giving up on the delivery which finally arrived at 2:45PM!

Insulation inspection is tomorrow. Sheet rockers start (for real) early tomorrow and will be working through the weekend.

The inspector won’t sign off the electrical to allow PG&E hookup until final inspection. I’m very disappointed. I would feel much better closing up the walls if I could test the lines first. Building or remodeling a house is a series of chicken and egg propositions interspersed with cart and horse endeavors. I can usually see where the inspector is coming from, but the rationale for not letting us finish X before doing Y is almost always dubious at best.

insulation & speaker wire

But anyway, this is a post about insulation. Since the inspector put the kibosh on electricity until we’re ready for final, I figured we need to get to final more quickly. I took Wednesday and Thursday off from work and used them to run the speaker wires through the walls (sticking out of the orange boxes pictured) for seven speakers, mount the networking panel, and take care of some odds and ends inside the walls. I also burned most of a day trying unsuccessfully to feed power from the temporary pole to the main panel, but all I got were tripped breakers because the main panel is grounded.

I ordered insulation which arrived Saturday morning. I spent a long day Saturday installing it all. Well, installing all that arrived anyway. The ceiling insulation downstairs did not arrive at all (backorder), and the ceiling insulation upstairs was short a bag. I’m pleased though. I should be able to get the rest early this week and install it after work.

I called the sheetrocker too. I was hoping he’d be able to get started early this week, but he’s already busy. So, he’s starting Labor Day weekend and should be done early the following week. With him starting on the weekend, I should be able tape and texture behind him.

After work this evening, I tied the water and gas lines onto the main UFER ground which I forgot to do over the weekend. I also rewired the overhead light downstairs and installed the new fan. I was planning on a combo unit, but there was no space to vent it, so I had to switch to a separate light and fan. When I finished up with that, I called for inspection on Friday so I can get the power hooked up next week.

Fingers crossed …

Office window

We were greeted with a pleasant surprise when we arrived at the house Sunday around noon. The windows which arrived on Thursday were already installed downstairs!
One of my dearest friends was in town for the weekend with his lovely wife and their three children (8 months, 3.5 years and 8 years), so Michelle and I blew off working on the house in order to spend Saturday with them. It was great to see them again. I miss the days when we used to play Mexican Rat Screw for hours. Ah, memories.

Side windows

The windows are really nice, and I am so psyched that they’re already installed. They do have some minor scratches on the paint, which is a bit disappointing. I contacted my Pella sales rep and he’s sending me some touch-up paint. Hopefully, that and some rubbing will take care of the scratches. If not, I’ll have to talk to him about a discount. We’ll see.

Rear windows

So, Michelle and I did spent Sunday afternoon working, after sleeping in a bit. I felt pretty ineffectual in my efforts to cut holes for the new outlets over the kitchen counter (damn that building code!). Eventually, I did succeed in cutting the holes, but couldn’t reach them from the outside to run the Romex (note both of the tall ladders laden with scaffolding in the picture of the side windows above … on the opposite side of the building). I did manage to run the new dedicated circuit for the new furnace, which gets installed Wednesday through Friday this week. I’ll take my wins where I can.

Baseboards are gone

Meanwhile, Michelle worked diligently prying the baseboards off the bedroom walls. They were tough suckers. They were also really nice, 1″x10″ 100 year old rough cut redwood, and I’m really sorry to see them go. Alas, they had outlet holes cut into them (some my doing, and some pre-existing) and need to be replaced. So, out they came with much prying and much forcing and a bit of splitting. She managed to clear them out of the front bedroom entirely plus two of the walls in the second bedroom. A good afternoon’s work.

I meet the Sears installer for the furnace in the morning. Steve is having emergency surgery to remove his wisdom teeth, so I’m expecting to lose him for the rest of the week. I need to get creative to fill in for him so the furnace installers can work.
I remember having my wisdom teeth pulled when I was home from college. The next day or the day after that, I wasn’t feeling the slightest hint of pain, so I held off on the pain killers for a couple of hours. Once I realized just how effectively they were working, I spent about an hour wishing I was dead until they kicked in again. We were spending the day at my aunt and uncle’s place in Sacramento where everyone commented a least a couple of times about my chipmunk cheeks. Ah, memories.